This is a sort-of sequel to an other Torres!Babies oneshot called "Nightmares." It's on my page if you want to read more of Megan's (mis)adventures.
I don't own Degrassi.
The Talk
Voicemail. Again. There needed to be some sort of code that let you turn on other people's phones when it was an emergency. No one could really complain about a phone going off during the overture when it's literally a matter of life and death.
Mom was at the theatre with Grandma and Aunt Tracy, leaving Megan the only woman in a house full of boys (Bubsy and Lucy, being only eight and five respectively, did not yet count as women.) She was stuck in the bathroom. All alone. On Super Bowl Sunday.
Megan only just stopped herself from throwing the phone squarely into the toilet and flushing it in frustration. It had to be today. Heather Rennie may have thought that "starting" in the middle of drama class was the most horrific way for it to happen, but all she had to do was get a hall pass and sneak to the nurse's office. Nobody would have even found out of she didn't feel like telling absolutely everyone about it the next day in homeroom. She didn't have to face the prospect of announcing her debut into womanhood infront of her dad and all his guy friends on the manliest day of the year.
A roar of cheering erupted downstairs. Someone must have scored a goal, or touchdown or a hole-in-one - whatever it was you did in football, Megan (much to her father's eternal despair) certainly didn't know. Or care. She had a medical emergency to deal with; there was blood! Granted, not a lot of blood, but still, she was sure that blood was supposed to remain inside the body. Puberty was messed up and stupid. And sexist, too! Boys got to be taller and stronger, girls got to curl up in a ball and bleed for the better part of a week, how was that fair?
She was starting to become really grateful, despite her earlier complaining, that they didn't go to Uncle Adam and Aunt Tracy's place after all. They have had way more room and a much bigger TV, but if it had started at their house, it would have been about ten times more horrific than it already was. At least she could get a change of clothes if need be at her own house; she doubted that cousin Matt had anything that would fit (or anything she'd remotely want to wear; eight-year-old boys were not known for their exquisite taste in clothes.)
Oh god. She didn't want to have to get a change of clothes. Then everyone would know. And she'd never live it down. She wasn't entirely sure how there was a way out of the situation without never being able to live it down. Mom wouldn't be back for hours. The house could resemble an Egyptian plague by then!
She looked around the sea-green bathroom. It seemed even smaller than usual. The crushing, puke-coloured walls made her feel queasy. Mom had talked to her about the birds and the bees, and they'd watched the video in health class, but she didn't exactly pay attention. It was boring, and weird, and gross. It didn't seem like it was ever going to happen to her.
Why didn't she pay attention? Why did she live in stupid, small house with only one bathroom for five people? Why did it have to be today?
Heather said it hurts really bad - like you can't walk more that two yards without collapsing bad. She said you had to take The Pill to make it go away, but they come in a certain order if you get the order wrong it hurts twice as much. Megan wasn't sure whether or not to believe that; Heather made things up a lot. But she didn't really have a better source on hand. And no one in the house could help her, they were all guys; they'd never been through this. They'd never-
That wasn't true. Or, at least if the math she was doing in her head worked out, it probably wasn't true. She had one person. She didn't really want to drag him into it.
But she had no one else.
"Uncle Adam!" she called down the stairs, hoping the panic in her voice was merely her imagination.
She waited. The television became quieter as someone lowered the volume on the game. Great, she was ruining the Super Bowl for everyone.
"Princess?" Dad's voice called back. "Did you yell for me?"
Dad was going to ask questions. She was going to have to shout down the whole situation to him. She had been worried about the whole house knowing what was going on – now she had to worry about the whole street somehow overhearing.
"Is Uncle Adam there?" She groaned.
There was a series of low voices too far away to hear clearly. Footsteps made their way towards the stairs, climbing up them. They were too light to be Dad's and too slow to be her cousin's or either of her sister's. A gentle knock rapped against the door.
"Meg?" Uncle Adam's voice said through the door.
She unlocked the door, opening it up enough to see Uncle Adam's perplexed expression. It wasn't everyday, or any day, that she invited him to chat in the bathroom with her.
"Can you come in?" She asked. "Please?"
"Uh, sure," he said, slipping his narrow shoulders through the gap in the door.
"Lock the door behind you?"
He nodded obediently, his brows still furrowed in confusion. Megan sat back down on the bathtub's edge and shuffled up to give him room, not that it was necessary; where Dad was big and soft and cuddly, Uncle Adam was small and thin with pointed edges. Like a man made out of paper.
She suddenly felt herself wanting to back out. Involving Uncle Adam was an instantly terribly idea. She didn't want to make things awkward. It had only been a month or two since Dad and Uncle Adam had started talking again after The Big Fight, and they were both doing a really good job of ignoring that near-year of hostility. Uncle Adam was even cheering on Matt (the unwitting source of The Big Fight) as he threw the football around with Dad in the back yard, like nothing had ever happened. It was nice.
"So," he said casually. "What's up?"
"I, uh," Megan muttered, spinning a roulette wheel of word choices in her head, making herself dizzy, "I… started."
Uncle Adam blinked a few times. "Started what?"
"Uncle Adam," she groaned. "Don't make me say it – it's embarrassing!"
"Sorry, Meg," he said, shaking his head. "You're going to have to give me a vowel here."
"Oh my god," she said. "I went to the bathroom and I looked down and…"
She bowed her head forward, urging – begging - Uncle Adam to fill in the rest of that sentence.
His eyes widened. Bingo.
"Oh," he said dimly.
His eyes darted around the bathroom, as if looking for someone else to help him out.
"I haven't really had to deal with this in a while," he said, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "Have you tried your Mom-"
"-She's not got her phone on!"
"The theatre. Right. Okay. Okay…"
He scratched the side of his face, looking around the tiny bathroom for some sort of inspiration.
"How about your friends – they could."
"All my friends are twelve, they haven't… you know. Apart from Heather, but she'll tell everyone!"
"Okay, not Heather," he said, lifting his hands out. "How about…"
He stopped himself, ripping that idea out his ledger and throwing it swiftly away.
"What am I saying? Sit down, we can totally work this out."
He folded himself over, sitting beside her on the bathtub's edge. "So this just happened here just now?"
Megan nodded.
"Okay," Uncle Adam said slowly, processing all the information. "Where does your mom keep the, uh, hygiene products?"
"I don't know," Megan wailed, she could feel the anxiousness bubble up into her throat, making her voice wobble. Her face was getting furiously hot. She was not going to cry – even if she did have a completely excusable reason for it. This was the most embarrassing that had ever happened to her. Worse than that time in French when she asked Mr. Kaye what "voulez-vous coucher avec moi" meant, worse than her painful three-year-long crush on Rocky, worse than Dad telling Uncle Mike about said crush, - worse than all of that combined and multiplied by a thousand. "I've never had to deal with this before. I'm not ready to deal with this, I'm twelve!"
She sank further down on the edge of the bathtub, supporting her elbows on her knees, dropping her head into her hands and let the growing bubble inside of her burst open, not particularly caring that she was crying infront of Uncle Adam. She could feel him gently patting her on the back as she violently heaved from her sobs. She couldn't decide if she felt stupid or completely justified. Or both. She was feeling everything. Periods were so stupid.
Uncle Adam took a few careful breaths, as if trying to work out what to say, drawing a blank and the letting out his unused breath in the form of a sigh. It still sounded better than Megan's heavy gasping as she swallowed back the heavy, salty taste swirling around in the back of the throat.
"I was eleven," he offered, hand still on her back reassuringly. "And I sat on the edge of the bathtub in the bathroom as Grandma gave me The Talk."
Megan stopped crying long enough to look up and stare at him. She had a hard time imagining Uncle Adam ever having to go through girl problems. She had seen pictures of Uncle Adam when he was her age, but it didn't look anything like him. It just looked like her long-lost Aunt Gracie, who Megan never got to meet, but whose absence the grown ups sometimes talked about with a matter-of-factness that Megan just found weird; like she just got on a bus and was having a lovely time vacationing somewhere (so lovely in fact, that she just decided to stay in wherever-it-was-she-went.) It wasn't until she saw pictures of Uncle Adam as a teenager that she could even see the resemblance to Aunt Gracie. Proper, grown-up Uncle Adam was like a completely different person.
But he was the only person in the house who could even remotely relate to what she was going through.
"And this is back when Grandma was still scary, so she didn't even explain it to me gently," Uncle Adam added. Megan scoffed; as much as Dad and Uncle Adam insisted otherwise, she refused to believe that Grandma Torres was ever scary.
"Yeah, she may seem sweet now," Uncle Adam said, raising his eyebrows. "But she will still cut through anything in her path. Or at least snip away at it until it relents!"
He made an aggressive stabbing scissors motion with his hands, as if to emphasize his point, or maybe just to make Megan smile. Either way it worked.
"Mom's kind of like that," she said, wiping her face.
Uncle Adam's eyes widened further. "Yeah, I know. I think that's why they get along so well!"
"I tried to call her, but her phone's off," Megan explained. "Where do you think she keeps the pills?"
"Pills?"
"I don't want to pass out, Heather says it hurts really bad!"
"Uh," Uncle Adam said slowly, "you mean like painkillers, or-"
"-And I don't know the order either," she sighed, feeling panicky again. "Do you remember the order?"
"The order?"
"You need to take the pills in a certain order or it hurts twice as bad! Heather said-"
Uncle Adam shook his head. "Heather's spewing bull-," he stopped. "Uh, she's making that up. Hold on."
He got up and hunched over to the cupboard under the sink, opening it up and rummaging for a bit. His hand appeared at the top of the door, placing a box of painkillers by the edge of the sink. Followed closely by a green plastic package. He pulled himself back up and closed the cupboard behind him.
"Do you want these now?" he asked, waving the box of painkillers around.
"No, I don't need to," she answered. "Wait, should I?"
"No, no," he insisted. "Either way's normal; some people feel more uncomfortable than others –it just depends."
He shrugged like it was all normal. Hearing someone talking about "girl problems" as "person problems" was a little weird, but at least he was trying to make her feel better. It may have even been working a little bit.
"Painkillers should be enough - that and maybe a hot water bottle or something," he explained. "If that doesn't work, your doctor should be able to give you something a little stronger. But passing out in pain isn't normal – don't let Heather scare you."
"Heather lies a lot," Megan said, feeling herself grin. "She said she got backstage at the Cody Bryson concert in Toronto, but Kimberly and Ruth were sitting, like, three rows behind her and they said she never went anywhere near backstage."
Uncle Adam laughed to himself. "Wow, middle school never changes."
He let out a long sigh, apparently remembering exactly how little middle school changes. He shook himself out of his memories and back to the present, pulling a plastic envelope out of the green packet and showing it to Megan. "Okay – do you know how to use these?"
Megan shook her head.
"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. "It's really easy. So it's basically like a giant band-aid-"
Megan listened as he explained, sticking the massive pad on his arm to demonstrate, wrapping the little "wings" around his wrist and shaking it around to show that it wasn't going to fall off on its own, throwing her arm around like a bucking horse with the "saddle" remaining obediently on its back. Megan rolled her eyes at his silliness. The tightness in her chest started to loosen.
"-and, like a band-aid, every couple of hours you replace it with a new one. So you pull it off-"
He reached his arm over to Megan for her to rip it off. Uncle Adam flinched as some of his arm hairs went with it.
"That doesn't normally happen," he grimaced, rubbing the red, bald patch where his arm hair once was.
Megan laughed, further releasing some of the tightness that had been sitting inside her.
"Wrap it up, throw it in the trash – never the toilet," he warned. "Wash your hands and repeat. You got it?"
"I think so," she nodded. It was pretty straightforward. She wasn't sure what she was so worried about, or what she was still so worried about.
"What's wrong?" Uncle Adam asked, studying the concerned look that must have still been on her face.
"It's just," she started, searching for the right words, "why me? I didn't do anything wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"I've never even come close to kissing a boy or anything," she admitted. "I still watch cartoons with Bubsy and Lucy sometimes. Dad still calls me princess. I don't want to grow up yet. Amy got grounded for getting a hickey at New Year's and she hasn't started yet."
Uncle Adam's face remained neutral.
"I just," she muttered, "I still want to be a kid, you know?"
"You are still a kid," Uncle Adam assured her, "What you feel on the inside counts for more than what your insides do."
"Mind over body," Megan chanted. "Dad always says that." Although, when Dad said it, it usually involved his insistence that he could carry a heavy dresser up the stairs without dismantling it first despite his sweating and wheezing suggesting otherwise (to his credit, he did get the dresser up the stairs, but he spent the rest of the weak grunting in pain every time he moved.)
"What do you think," Uncle Adam asked. "You think he's right?"
She looked at him carefully. Megan, as everyone always told her, looked like Mom, as did Lucy. Bubsy looked like Grandpa, only quite a bit rounder. Matt looked like eerily like Dad (for reasons no one was to ever discuss, lest there be another Big Fight.) No one looked like Uncle Adam. But Megan always felt that Uncle Adam was the person she was most like, or at least the person she wanted to be the most like. He was… cool. He just didn't let anything get in his way; he didn't seem like he was afraid of anything, or embarrassed by anything, or let anyone tell him "no." He was living proof that how you feel is more powerful than what your body does on it's own. Megan felt herself nodding slowly. Uncle Adam was always good at taking her thoughts and saying them back to her in a way that made sense. He was like the letter you write when you can't think straight, but when you read it back, it gives you clarity again.
"I think," she said, "I think that if I want to still be a kid, then I'm still a kid."
Uncle Adam grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He looked older than Megan remembered, and she wondered if the last year had aged him. She knew that it aged Dad; she'd hear him pace in the living room at all hours of the night, picking up the phone, scrolling through the phone book (not very far, he always stopped pretty early on in the alphabet) then, after a long silence, hanging the phone back up again. He got really tense one time when the music in his car shuffled to a song by a band with a stupid name (Whisper Love or something like that.) It was such a happy song, but he definitely looked tearful when he skipped it to the next one. It must have meant something, but he really didn't want to talk about it. Instead, he played twenty questions with Lucy, sitting in her car seat and completely oblivious to the change in mood. Megan couldn't help but notice how pale and tired he looked that day.
"Do you think I should tell Dad?" she asked as she remembered his old, tired face.
"I don't know," Uncle Adam shrugged. "Do you want to?"
"He's going to ask why we're chilling in the bathroom together," Megan said. "I just don't want him to… you know."
Uncle Adam didn't say anything; he just let the words hang there, waiting for Megan to figure out what she was trying to say.
"I thought he was going to cry when I started middle school," she sighed. "He doesn't deal with change very well!"
"He's more adjustable than he looks," Uncle Adam grinned. "He may just surprise you."
She pulled her mouth to one side, trying to work out the best way to talk to Dad about it and coming up with nothing.
"I can have a word with him if you want," Uncle Adam offered.
Megan smiled. "I'd like that."
Uncle Adam smiled back her, giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder with one hand and passing her a wad of toilet paper with the other.
"So," Megan sighed, blowing her nose. "Is this, like, the most awkward moment of your life or what?"
"Not even close," Uncle Adam said, widening his eyes knowingly. "Trust me."
He redrew his face into a wide grin that Megan couldn't help but catch herself mirroring.
"Thanks, Uncle Adam. You're seriously, like, the coolest uncle ever."
"And between you and me, you're the coolest niece ever. We need to start hanging out more," he said, almost smiling, before stopping himself when he realised why they hadn't hung out more.
"We need to make up for some lost time," he sighed, suddenly becoming much more serious. "I'm sorry for that, by the way; it was my fault we couldn't spend that time together. I was being a, uh, let's say an idiot."
"It's okay," she assured. And she meant it. Because it was just as much Dad's fault as it was Uncle Adam's that The Big Fight happened; Uncle Adam should have told Matt earlier, and Dad shouldn't have told Matt behind Uncle Adam's back (although Mom disagreed with Dad, saying that six was too young to explain to a kid the complicated biological aspects of how he came to be and how biology didn't make someone your dad - being a dad made someone your dad. Megan didn't share Mom's view; she was only five when Matt was born and she knew and it didn't confuse her. She understood that Matt was her stupid little boy cousin and not her stupid little boy brother, or half-brother, or whatever.)
Uncle Adam stood up, flattening out his edges again.
"So, uh," he said, suddenly becoming more businesslike. "Are you going to be okay here, or-"
"I think I've got it worked out."
"Great," he said, moving towards the door again. "Well if you need me or your dad…"
"I know where to find you," she finished for him.
He slid through the door again without another sound, walking back down the stairs. The game was still on. Megan had forgotten that it was Super Bowl Sunday and there were a dozen people in her house. She had drowned out the noise of the television entirely.
She got herself ready and filled the sink with cold water, submerging her face into the cool in hopes that it would calm the redness. Another cheer. Another goal or something. She reached back into the cupboard under the sink and pulled out Mom's makeup bag. Megan didn't wear makeup, Dad would have a fit if she came down the stairs with a full face of paint, but he probably wouldn't notice if she used some of Mom's under eye concealer: "hides bags and dark circles" – that would probably cover up her red, puffy cry-face. She put on just the tiniest bit of lipgloss too – just for good measure. She may have still been a kid, but that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy some grown up things now and then.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked exactly the same as she did at the beginning of the day.
She opened the bathroom door and braved the world. She didn't feel any different; her lips felt a bit sticky and gooey, but otherwise, she was pretty sure she was the same person she was before she entered the bathroom and got the shock of her life.
The living room hadn't changed either. Dad was sitting on the couch, resting a bowl of cheese puffs on his stomach. He was exactly where she left him.
Of course Dad would always be exactly where she left him. It was the best and worst thing about him; he never moved. He would always be there, but that wasn't to say that Megan would always want to stay there. She was, whether she was ready to or not, starting to move and, of course, Dad wouldn't follow. He wouldn't know how. He'd remain solidly in his one comfy place, growing moss and waiting for her to come back to him, unable to understand why shy didn't want to grow moss of her own.
Dad was her rock. And Uncle Adam was her paper.
(Then she remembered that paper beat rock, which made no sense whatsoever. Rock should always beat paper; almost everything should beat paper – including the grubby little kid-hands being used to play the silly game in the first place. Maybe rock let paper win. Or maybe paper just refused to lose.)
She curled back on to the couch, pulling Dad's arm over her and cuddling into his side.
"You okay, princess," he asked, "you've been gone a long time."
She glanced over to Uncle Adam, sitting on the armchair across from them, Matt beside him, half-sitting on the arm of the chair and half-resting on Uncle Adam's shoulder. He flashed her a quick smile before returning to the game.
"Yeah," she said, further curling into Dad. "Everything's fine."
She watched the screen and pretended to understand the game, starting to feel like things were going to be okay after all.
The was glad they had the talk.
.
oOo
.
Matt, despite being fully-dressed, still managed to have clothes strewn all over the living room; his jacket, body warmer, gloves, hoodie and hat had been thrown around throughout the course of the day – not in the same location, of course; that would make retrieving them far too easy.
Adam felt his shoulder blades cramp from bending down. This was obviously a counter-symptom from being shot, and not from getting dangerously close to forty. It was probably perfectly common for gun-shot victims to get pain near to their wound twenty years after the initial incident; he was sure he had read about it in the most recent Bullshit Medical Journal.
Everyone else had left already. The red solo cups that no one ever seemed to buy but always happened to appear whenever there was a party were tidily stacked on the ring-free coffee table. They had enjoyed the Super Bowl like the married men they all were. Even Dave, the newest of the husbands, was vigilant about the coasters.
Adam left Matt to play with Sophie (he was trying to get out of the habit of calling her Bubsy; knowing she would want to outgrow her nickname long before she would outgrow her round-facedness. He worried that the nickname would eventually start to cause some real damage to her self-esteem. No one else shared his concerns.) Adam would probably have to call him in at some point to help locate the rest of his stuff. Or drag him in, since he probably wouldn't help out willingly.
Lucy, on the other hand, was quite content to march around the living room with the handheld vacuum cleaner and rid the couches of any crumbs. She stood, brushing down her Disney Princess apron, looking around at her domain; Matt's clothes scattered around the only thing stopping it from being perfectly clean.
"You men really need to learn to clean up after yourselves," she tutted. "I'm not always going to be here to do it, you know!"
Adam tried not to laugh when she was being so serious. This was the first Super Bowl she didn't sit and watch on Drew's lap. She was much happier to play with her tea set on the floor and chide the men for putting their feet on the coffee table. Clearly Drew's attempts to get at least one of his daughters into sports were failing.
He stretched out his back, listening to it creak like the door to a haunted house. That couldn't have been healthy.
"Hey, Luce," he called. "You want to help me play the "find cousin Matt's clothes" game-"
He turned around. Lucy was gone. Her apron carefully folded neatly beside her packed-up tea set. In her place was Drew, bending down to pick up the apron and tea set and putting them back in their place in the small utility closet under the stairs.
"She's playing with Bubsy and Matt," Drew explained. "Or… she's yelling at them for not playing properly."
Adam laughed feebly. It was still awkward. It had been two months, it shouldn't have still been so awkward.
"Good game, huh?" He tried. Even in his head it sounded lame.
"Yeah," Drew said, his hands stuffed deeply in his pockets. "Good, good, good."
"Good."
"Yeah."
They stood in the living room in silence for a while. Adam found himself looking around the living room. It was a museum of Torres; pictures of the girls drowning out the walls and occupying any surface that could support a photo frame. There were pictures of Drew and Bianca, pictures of Mom and Dad, even a few of Bianca's aunt. There weren't any of Adam, Tracy or Matt. Adam could only guess that Drew put them away after That Day and had never gotten around to putting them back up (or maybe the didn't exist anymore. Adam himself was incredibly tempted to set anything that reminded him of Drew on fire, but Tracy talked some sense into him. He was glad she did.) He found himself focusing on a space on the wall that used to have a picture of him and Drew at Adam's 21st birthday. He was still at college and was going through a "sideburns" phase. They grew in a drastically different colour from the rest of his hair to the point where they almost looked stuck on. It was pretty unfortunate. That picture had been replaced by a beaming Megan, her two front teeth missing.
Megan.
"I need to talk to you about something," he said, feeling more and more anxious as each syllable left his mouth. He wasn't ready for this. Apparently neither was Drew.
"Uh," he said, looking nervous. "Okay. Shoot."
"it's about Megan," Adam sighed. "Just… be gentle with her for the next few days, okay?"
Drew looked up at the ceiling to Megan and Sophie's room, where Megan was currently sitting on the computer, making collages or playlists, or whatever it was pre-teen girls did.
"What did you two discuss in the bathroom?" Drew whispered harshly, his shoulders creeping up and threatening to swallow his neck. "You were gone forever, is she okay-"
"Dude, she's fine," Adam assured him. "She's just going through stuff."
"Stuff?"
"Stuff," Adam echoed, hoping he wouldn't have to spell it out for him. "Girl stuff."
"Is Heather Rennie being a beyotch again?"
It always amused Adam how fluently Drew could speak middle school girl. Even more amusing was how seemingly unaware Drew was of this.
"Just… don't rib on her too much this week," he said carefully. "And every second week of the month for the next couple of decades."
"Every second-" Drew stared, a look of bemusement on his face, before slowly turning to horror. "No, you're not saying."
"I'm saying," Adam sighed. "Drew, it's not that big a deal."
"Are you kidding?" Drew spluttered, looking quite manic over such a small thing. "Do you know what this means?"
"Your chocolate bill just got a whole lot higher?"
"This isn't funny, Adam!" Drew warned, glaring at Adam's amused grin. "This is bad. This is really bad. What do we do?"
"You can't really do anything. It's just life, dude."
Drew started to pace. The living room was obviously his pacing spot – there was a bald patch on the carpet by the front window where he stopped and turned around to pace the length of the living room again. He did a few laps before collapsing back down on the couch. He sat there very quietly for a few minutes. Adam didn't dare say anything; when Drew was in a pacing mood, it was much better to just let him work it out on his own.
"She's not a little girl anymore, is she?"
Adam felt his stomach twist a little bit. He was expecting Drew to be comically flustered by the whole event, but not devastated. Adam wasn't sure how he was supposed to deal with devastated.
"She's twelve, Drew," he said casually. "She's not been a little girl for a long time."
"I'm never going to get used to that," said Drew, shaking his head.
"Well you sort of have to. In a few years time you're going to have to go through it all over again with Sophie-"
"Bubsy?" Drew said, looking up at Adam with a face that could only be described as panic. "No, no, not Bubsy. She's not allowed to grow up."
"Well I hate to break it to you," Adam said, pulling a sorry face, "but then you'll have to do it all again with Lucy too."
"Lucy?" Drew echoed, looking down at the crumb-free couch. "She's fine, she's already an adult, but not Bubsy."
He buried his weary face in his hands and let out a low groan. It would have been funny if he wasn't so genuinely upset.
"Why didn't she tell me?" he said, finally looking up at Adam again. "Why did she want you?"
Adam glared at him. "Why do you think she wanted me?"
"Really?" Drew said, pulling back his head in confusion. "You haven't had to deal with that crap since you were nineteen."
It made Adam feel smaller than he ever could have anticipated and he couldn't explain why. Nineteen. It seemed like a world away. Even further away was fourteen when he left behind "Gracie" for good. Megan was nearer fourteen than Adam was – Matt was closer to fourteen than Adam was. He had been Adam much longer than he had ever been "her". He hadn't even considered that before. The moment just… passed him by alongside all the little mundane things like board meetings and parent-teacher-conferences and failing to be convinced that turkey bacon was just as good as real bacon (he didn't care if Tracy said it was better for his cholesterol – it tasted like plastic.) He remembered being younger and thinking that turning twenty-eight and "outliving" Gracie was going to be a big, momentous occasion. Instead, he had probably spent the day turning inanimate objects into amazing new creatures trying to entertain a restless, teething infant and not being able to find the phone when it rang because he forgotten that he had stuck a pair of googly-eyes on it and renamed it "Professor Buttonface." Time was weird. The fact that Drew had a better grasp of Adam's time than Adam had was even weirder.
"I have eight years more experience than anyone else in the house this afternoon," he offered, but Drew didn't seem convinced.
"But Megan's always told me everything."
He looked over to the empty space next to him on the couch. Adam could only guess that he was imagining Megan sitting there – only Drew was looking too far down to meet twelve-year-old Megan's face, but rather a much smaller four-year-old Megan; the girl who insisted she go to pre-school in her pink tutu and tiara every day for a month. The girl who would come home with crayon drawings of her dad; a man who stood taller than all the trees and neighbourhood houses, hands on his hips as if here were Superman.
"Everything used to be about nightmares, and bugs, and playground bullies," Adam explained. "This stuff's kind of out of your league!"
"I'm good for some things," Drew insisted, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself more than Adam. "Like, I can tell her about boys; we can talk about stuff like that."
"She's never going to talk to you about boys," Adam said, wanting to laugh, but seeing how upset Drew still looked and stopping himself. "Not after you told Dallas about her crush on Rocky-"
"That was over a year ago. And it was cute!"
"Not to Megan," Adam urged. "You're her dad; you automatically make things embarrassing!"
It was supposed to make Drew smile – supposed to remind him of what it felt like to me a middle-schooler and awkward and embarrassed by anything and everything. But instead Drew retreated further into himself. It was so un-Drewlike it made Adam's stomach sink.
"Is this how things are going to be now?" he asked, looking at the floor, his voice almost too quiet to hear. "Megan has a problem and I'm the last to find out about it?"
Adam didn't quite make the move to sit down beside him. That could have opened up some floodgates that Adam wasn't sure he was ready to deal with yet (besides – four-year-old Megan was probably still sitting there.) Instead, he chose the armchair across from Drew. He suddenly felt like a therapist. After a year of not talking to each other, they were finally able to hold a conversation together. And it was about periods.
"You're not the last," Adam tried. "She wanted you to know; she asked me to tell you. It's just embarrassing, that's all."
"Did she really ask you to tell me?" Drew asked, silently urging Adam to reassure him that, yes, Megan didn't want to keep everything from him.
"Yeah, she did."
"I appreciate that," Drew said with so much sincerity it made Adam feel almost uncomfortable. He wasn't used to sincerity yet.
"Any time," he said, wishing he could say something genuine back, but dismissing every idea that came to mind. "You're going to be fine, though."
"Well you need to help me out. You guys need to move back to our zip code so Bubsy and Matt can go to Degrassi together-"
"I am not sending Matt to Degrassi."
"Why not?" Drew asked. "The Torres cousins retracing our old footsteps; it will be Drew and Adam 2.0!"
"Because Degrassi is a terrible school!"
"It's character building, though. Take my advice on this one."
"Dude, I stopped taking your advice when it started to involve cucumbers. I still have nightmares about that!"
"Well, if you send him to Bardell, you're a traitor and I'm never speaking to you again."
Adam felt himself tense up, watching Drew for the realization of what he just said to hit him too. It didn't take too long at all.
"What I mean is, uh," he stammered. "I don't actually-"
"Drew, it's fine."
"No, it's not," Drew insisted, his face twisting into a painful looking expression. "I was freaking miserable not talking to you. You know that, right?"
Adam felt himself agreeing, then realized that telling himself that didn't really help Drew very much.
"Yeah, me too."
It felt more uncomfortable than he wanted it to feel. He missed the days when he and Drew could talk about anything, no matter how awkward, and it still ended up all right. It hadn't been all right since That Day. And even though That Day was long behind them, it wasn't the same. They may have stopped not talking, but they weren't exactly talking either. At least not about anything deeper than "nice weather we're having" or "did you catch the game?" He missed having stupid, long, heartfelt conversations with his brother. This was the most substantive thing either of them had said since December, when Mom forced them in a room together and made them apologise to each other and not ruin Christmas for everyone.
"And the girls really missed you," Drew added.
"I missed them," said Adam quietly. "And you. And Bianca. Matt really missed his football partner. I tried playing in the backyard with him, but I apparently do it wrong."
That last sentence made him feel more exposed than he really wished it did. He didn't want to resent that there were things he couldn't teach Matt, or relate to him with. He couldn't really do the whole "I went through the same thing when I was in middle school" when his middle school experience involved training bras and PMS and punching Gavin Hailes in the face for trying to take upskirt pictures of him during home ec (or mom making a big show of yelling at Adam in the Principal's office then taking him out for ice cream straight after.)
"He really needs his Uncle Drew," he added, causing Drew to look up at him with a look of concern that Adam couldn't work out the reason for. He could feel Drew studying him. He did that a lot these days. He never used to; he didn't have to. Now he thought carefully about everything he said to Adam, figuring out what was the right thing so say. Adam appreciated the thought, but he really missed Drew just spewing out every little thought that came into his head. The "careful" conversation didn't feel like a real conversation at all.
"Maybe the three of us can play," he eventually said. "Just go easy on me – I'm not in my prime anymore! Ha-ha-ha!"
He let out a wooden laugh that didn't even reach his mouth let alone his eyes. He pulled himself up on the couch, sighing deeply. It was too late. The floodgates were well and truly open again.
"I'm-" he started, "I'm starting to have a hard time helping Megan with her homework. She's in only in grade seven. She's in grade seven and she's starting to outsmart me. I'm struggling now – she doesn't graduate high school for another eight years-"
"-Six years," Adam corrected before he could stop himself.
"See?" Drew said, throwing his arms out to point at the invisible evidence. "I can't help her with schoolwork, she can't come to me with her problems - I might as well just accept that I'm useless now. Go to some retirement home for redundant fathers of grown-up daughters."
Despite the nagging voice in his head telling him it was a bad idea, Adam got up and moved over to sit beside his brother on the couch.
"You know," he started, trying his hardest to push the little voice out of his mind, "there's a million things that Matt's on the brink of dealing with and I'm in no way equipped to talk to him about them. Literally. And do you know who he's going to go to?"
Drew didn't say anything. He had said almost the exact same thing to Adam last January during The Big Fight, only it was meant to hurt back then.
It did hurt back then.
"I just know that one day he's going to throw all of this in my face," Adam continued, trying to stop the feeling that his ribs were rattling in his chest. "I can hear exactly what he's going to say, even though Matt would never say those things – at least not now. But he's going to be fifteen one day and totally resent me for not being a normal dad."
The nagging voice stopped, only to be replaced by Matt, only he was a teenager (Adam used Drew's voice for demonstration since there was a very good chance it was what Matt would end out sounding like anyway.) It made the whole thing worse somehow; Drew would have never said those things either, but Matt was definitely going to say them, and it was like both of them were going to hate him - like being retroactively being punched in the gut, then kicked in the face when he collapsed to the ground.
"And it seriously keeps me awake at night," he said aloud, the little film in his mind still playing. "Tracy thinks I'm being an idiot."
Drew remained silent. It made Adam wonder if Drew knew what was going on in his head; he was always been convinced that Drew was just the tiniest bit psychic – sometime he just knew things that he had no justifiable reason for knowing. It was comforting and unnerving in equal parts. The film reached the end of its reel, spinning around, but doing nothing – the screen infront of it clean and clear and bright again.
"And then today happened," he smiled weakly, looking down at a sunken Drew. "And she may have came to me during a crisis, but the first person Megan wanted to see when she felt better was you. You're her dad. She loves you. You're the one she goes back to. You're her save point."
Drew smiled too; he got it. Adam remembered when Matt was a toddler and had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever; trying to run infront of cars and jump off anything high enough to cause fractures. Tracy got him a little baby-rein that Adam was pretty reluctant to use; it felt too much like walking a dog (and it felt a lot like admitting some sort of parental defeat, since Drew and Bianca never had to resort to such tactics for the girls.) He, very hesitantly, took Matt downtown with the damn dog leash on and Matt pulled against it with all his might, but he was three and attached to a bungee chord and never got very far. Eventually, Adam decided the whole thing was stupid and took Matt out of the harness. Less than a minute later Matt fell over and scraped his face. The first thing he did is run back to his Daddy. Adam didn't need a bungee chord; he was the bungee chord; a million-foot-long bungee chord that Matt could stay attached to, whether he was clumsily toddling in downtown Toronto, or taking a year out before grad school to backpack around eastern Europe. If he fell down, he knew how to find his way back home. And if he wanted to take a pit stop somewhere else (say, to his favourite Uncle's place) first, that was fine.
"I know Matt's still going to have a hard time dealing," he confessed. "I know he's going to go to someone else to talk about a lot of stuff because he can't do it with me. But I'm really glad it's you."
Drew didn't even bother with any kind of personal restraint. He pounced in for the hug. It startled Adam so much that he didn't hug him back straight away. His arms hung awkwardly by his side until he could bring himself to lift them up and pull his big brother in.
"Just don't be too hard on him when he starts acting like a little shit," he said to the side of Drew's face.
"I can't make any promises."
They pulled apart, but didn't quite let go, and smiled at each other in a way they hadn't in a very long time. Drew's eyebrow's furrowed so hard they almost touched.
"Stupid head," Drew grumbled, punching Adam in the good shoulder.
"Poop face," Adam retaliated, flicking the side of Drew's head.
The stood up in unison, both apparently needing to clear their throats at the same time.
"Listen," Adam said, taking in a deep breath. "What are you guys doing tomorrow night?"
"Bubsy's a dancing peanut in the school play," Drew answered. "I was going to get a head start on the costume."
"Oh," Adam muttered. "I was just wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner. We got this stone bake oven installed on the patio and it makes the best pizzas. But if you guys are busy I totally underst-"
"-I can start the peanut on Tuesday," Drew said quickly. "How can say no to pizza?"
Adam felt himself nod. It was starting to get dark and a crisp February chill began to kick in. Despite the cold, Adam could still hear the screams of laughter as the kids continued to play outside, squeezing out every second they could have with each other, making up for all that lost time. They were smart kids.
"Then it's a date."
Drew grinned and handed Adam a small glove that had apparently made it's way down the side of the couch cushion. He didn't even want to call Matt back in, he was having too much fun. He decided he could let him play a little longer. And maybe he and Drew could open up another bag of chips and eat them very carefully so as not to undo Lucy's cleaning. And maybe they could talk about other stupid stuff, like how on earth Drew was going to even begin to make a human-sized peanut costume. Or maybe they could say nothing at all. There was no rush. Adam wasn't going anywhere.
He was glad they had the talk.